


Beloved brother

by spleenessy



Series: The Umbrella Whisperings [5]
Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: 5+1 Things, Abusive Reginald Hargreeves, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Ben Hargreeves Needs A Hug, Brotherly Affection, Childhood, Good Sibling Number Five | The Boy, Other, Reginald Hargreeves' A+ Parenting
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-11
Updated: 2020-09-11
Packaged: 2021-03-06 23:15:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,243
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26407093
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spleenessy/pseuds/spleenessy
Summary: 5 times Five is there to comfort Ben and 1 time he isn’t.
Relationships: Number Five | The Boy & Ben Hargreeves, Number Five | The Boy/Ben Hargreeves
Series: The Umbrella Whisperings [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1302542
Comments: 15
Kudos: 89





	Beloved brother

**Author's Note:**

> Hello guess who is back to writing about this hell of a show after two years, I missed Ben and Five so much I spent the whole summer crying  
> Hope you guys will enjoy this fic as much as you enjoyed the others  
> I was totally inspired by the amazing artist @flavoredmagpie on Instagram who draws the best little Ben and little Five being good siblings together and they also have great and angsty headcanons, you should definitely check them out

“You are worthless if you are not even capable of accomplishing such elementary things.”

Reginald’s voice is cold, commanding, and full of contempt. Ben quakes and keeps his gaze low.

“Number Six, look at me.”

Ben doesn’t want to, but it’s an order, and he knows that he can get punished for disobeying his father. So Ben straightens up and looks up to face Reginald. In the corner of his eye, he can see his siblings making themselves as small as possible and he can’t blame them. Ben too, sometimes, when he is in the same room as his father, wants to become invisible, or at least so insignificant that Reginald will not pay attention to him. But Reginald always pays attention to everything, even the little details - like that time when Ben had not washed his mouth and some of Grace’s chocolate cake was still visible on his lips, Reginald had scolded him for being dirty and shamed him in front of his siblings for the sake of making an example out of him.

Today Reginald is scolding him again, but about something far more serious than Ben forgetting to wash his mouth. Today is about sports practice, and Ben doesn’t know how to keep a foot up with the other one still on the ground. It’s a simple exercise that everyone can do. But Ben can’t. And he knows it’s stupid because he just has to raise his foot, keep his balance by extending his hands, and pause without trembling for, what, ten seconds? But he fails miserably every time. Next to him, Luther can stand for almost one minute before he starts trembling, and Diego at least forty seconds. But not Ben. Ben has no balance and it sounds so silly because everyone does, or at least all his siblings.

So Ben looks at Reginald and wishes his body was not so useless.

“Try again,” Reginald says, in a calm and slow voice that sends a shiver down Ben’s spine.

He obeys nonetheless, despite knowing that he is going to fail again, that his foot will tremble, then his leg, then his whole body and he will feel like he is falling so he will try to catch hold onto something, but there will only be air, so he will completely lose his balance and have to put his foot down – or he will just fall forward, on the ground, pathetically, and no one will help him stand up.

Ben raises his right foot.

He shakes.

He falls.

Reginald doesn’t move. He watches Ben struggles to find his balance back and keeps watching when Ben ends up falling forward, on all four, hurting his knees in the process. Reginald watches and his face is stone cold. There isn’t a sound, all the siblings are holding their breath, waiting for something to happen, anything: will Reginald hit Ben? He doesn’t, usually, not for something so futile, but sometimes Reginald’s patience runs out too quickly and the slap hits them faster than they expect.

Ben stays on the ground. He feels ashamed and he doesn’t want to get up. He doesn’t want to his dad’s face, nor the others’. He just wants to disappear.

“Pathetic,” Reginald eventually says.

And then he turns around and walks away.

After practice, Ben walks straight to his bedroom. He sits on his bed and starts crying, tears of frustration and shame while thinking about how stupid he looked in front of his siblings, and how dumb his body is for not being able to do a thing as easy as keeping his balance. He cries and he imagines how much he must have disappointed Reginald with such behavior. He thinks about how his siblings are probably mocking him, and he thinks that they are right to do it because he can’t help but feel like he deserves to.

He cries harder.

He knows he doesn’t have much time, though. Soon diner will be ready, and he will have to go down and join his siblings for souper. He can’t let his tears appear in front of the others, so he lets everything overflow him now, thus he’ll be able to attend diner without being a whimpering mess.

“Ben?”

Ben looks up to see Five at the door. Ben didn’t hear him come, and now he feels embarrassed as he quickly dries his tears with the sleeve of his sweater.

“Five,” his voice cracks when he talks, “what are you doing here?”

Ben doesn’t look at his brother, he can’t, he picks up the book that he had let on his bed on the morning, before going down for training, and starts flipping through it nervously to hide himself somehow.

“Just checking up on you, are you okay?”

“Yes, I’m fine,” Ben answers hastily.

Five is probably not convinced, because he closes the door behind him and joins Ben on his bed. Ben keeps looking at his book as if it were going to save him from Five’s insistent gaze on him. After a few seconds, Five takes the book from Ben’s hands and put it on the side.

“Ben,” Five calls, “look at me.”

He says it in a soft voice, and he gently takes Ben’s hand in his. It’s a very different way of asking Ben to look up from Reginald’s and Ben realizes he doesn’t feel as forced to obey as he does in front of his father. Ben doesn’t fear Five nor his reactions, and when he looks up, he is relieved to see that Five is smiling at him.

It’s not the smug smile he usually puts on when he is pranking his other siblings. It’s the soft and genuine smile he has when he talks to Ben, when there is just the two of them in a room and they share their point of view on the last book they both read. Ben feels immediately relieved.

“You’re not worthless,” Five says, and Ben shivers.

Reginald’s words had been stuck in Ben’s head since he had said it, and he realizes it only now. Ben wonders how did Five guess that this was what bothered him, but Ben doesn’t really need an answer to that question. His eyes remain focused on Five, and he nods quietly. His tears have completely dried.

Five squeezes Ben’s hand shortly, before standing up.

“Come on, diner is almost ready, and we don’t want to make the old man wait, do we?”

Ben’s face lights up with a smile and he even chuckles at the way Five calls their father.

“I’ll be right behind you,” Ben says, and Five nods, before leaving.

Ben takes a few seconds to completely calm down and gather himself, and he wipes the last remaining tears from his cheeks. When he looks at himself in the mirror, he thinks back at Reginald’s words, and then Five’s. A part of Ben oddly wants to believe that Reginald is right, that he is not worthy and will never accomplish anything in his life – but then Ben thinks about Five’s reassuring smile and the way he always says that their father is an old man who doesn’t see what their true potential is, and Ben feels better.

Ben doesn’t think he needs Reginald’s approval, as long as Five is there to tell him what really matters. And being able to stand on one foot only while keeping his balance is definitely not part of it.


End file.
